Not All Movies Can Be Good

Not all movies can be good. In general terms, there are three to five movies released wide every week and dozens more in smaller markets around the country. Film is big business and audiences demand new content on a regular basis, largely as a distraction from everyday life.

Occasionally, I think about the amount of time I spend on being entertained by books, movies, television shows, video games, music, etc. and I wonder just what it is I’m trying not to think about.

There is something to be said about our constant state of diversion but I can’t really get a handle on it because I’m too busy thinking about how cool the new Spider-man video game looks or whether or not all of the Avengers are going to return in the next movie. There’s no time to be still.

To be fair, being still can lead to uncomfortable thoughts about our place in the world and what it is that we truly do and don’t deserve, which is an absolutely terrifying line of thinking, particularly for the white American male.

This is all a digression from my main point, however, which is that not all movies can be good. Specifically, the Amazon pictures film Gringo (not be confused with the 1989 Gregory Peck/Jane Fonda film Old Gringo or the 2012 Mel Gibson film Get Him to the Gringo) is not very good.

It was summer film released to not much fanfare, filled with great actors, that completely vanished from theaters almost immediately. As a distraction, though, it almost works.

David Oeylowo stars in Gringo as a downtrodden Nigerian immigrant named Harold who works for a pharmaceutical company that may soon merge with another company and cost him his job. Harold suspects something but he doesn’t know all the details.

All Harold knows is that his greedy friend and CEO of the company, Richard (Joel Edgerton), graciously gave him a job and allowed him to manage a lucrative account south of the border.

Richard even hired Harold’s wife to be his interior decorator, despite her lack of experience. But as is said in a line from a much better movie, what David doesn’t know about Richard could fill the Grand Canyon. For instance, he doesn’t know that his company is selling pills to a Mexican drug cartel.

He doesn’t know that Richard allowed the company’s kidnapping insurance to lapse. He doesn’t know that Richard is currently sleeping with his wife. All of these things are found out in due time, of course.

Gringo is the type of film where things go from bad to worse to absurd in a matter of minutes. The filmmakers attempt to play this for comedy, but it doesn’t quite work.

It doesn’t work because no one really cares about Harold. Not his wife. Not his boss. Not even the audience. There’s a way to do a movie about a sad sack, a born loser who never makes it and can’t get ahead.

The William H. Macy film The Cooler is a great example. Ultimately, the character is endearing enough to win over the audience. Harold simply isn’t interesting. We just don’t get enough of his personality. Additionally, audiences have become conditioned to expect a certain level of violence in films that depict Mexican drug cartels.

We’ve read stories about entire busloads of tourists disappearing, passengers being forced in some case to fight to the death for the amusement of cartel members. We’ve seen tortoises crawl across the desert with severed heads resting on their backs. Some of us have even spent countless hours watching Narcos.

Gringo never reaches that level of violence, and as such, doesn’t come across as particularly threatening. Despite Harold’s born loser qualities, we never really feel like he’s in any danger.

And so, Gringo is mostly a bust. It’s the type of film that you might watch on a Sunday when the kids are gone, football season is over, and the only thing on is the third quarter of some hockey game with second rate teams locked in a defensive struggle.

When the ennui starts encroaching on the edges of your mind, and you start to wonder what it is about your boss that entitles them to three or four times your salary, and you wonder why you settled for an English major when you’re pretty good with computers, and most of your friends who joined the military are doing pretty good right now, you might just decide Gringo is a better use of your time.